This dissertation provides an account of the aims of rational inquiry with the purpose of explaining the value of truth, information, justification, understanding, and knowledge. I argue that inquirers ought to have two chief and competing goals: to pursue information, and to avoid error. Inquirers ought to want answers that fully satisfy their demands for information, but they should also want those answers to be true. These goals come into conflict, since an agent aiming solely to avoid error could reject any putative information, while an agent aiming solely at pursuing information could accept any putative information regardless of the evidence. Rational inquirers must, then, have some way of balancing their competing aims. I argue that rational inquirers must strike this balance by appealing to the practical reasons for which they are inquiring, which entails that the theory of inquiry has an essential pragmatic element. In pursuing her primary aims an inquirer will need to pursue justification—an account of which is provided—and also ought to be concerned to avoid the luck that is present in Gettier cases. These reflections explain why knowledge has played such a central role in epistemology, since I argue that successful inquiry will result in a form of internalist knowledge.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-173). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99248

<p>Naturalism faces problems caused by a lack of agreement about whether there is or can be a meaningful and useful conception of naturalism as a general research position. Without a widely agreed upon account of what naturalism in general amounts to there is no clear and definitive way to adjudicate disputes as to what is consistent with naturalism; the absence of such an account also makes it impossible for specific projects in naturalistic inquiry to take guidance from naturalism in general. In the following, I develop a determinate account of naturalism in general, which I think could find acceptance among naturalists because it accounts for many of the features commonly associated with naturalism. To do this, I first lay out the problem to be solved, express its importance, and explain what a solution to the problem would involve. I then make appeal to an account of naturalism developed by Penelope Maddy and use this account to show that the published and unpublished work of Charles Sanders Peirce offers, prima facie, a more determinate account of naturalism than is commonly recognized and that goes beyond the account given by Maddy. With this Peircean account developed, I then measure it against the criteria I develop and conclude that a Pericean account of naturalism does promise to adjudicate various disputes in the naturalism literature and to offer guidance to the development and application of specific projects in naturalistic inquiry.</p> / Dissertation

AIDS Saskatoon (AS), a non-profit organization, has limited funding. Most of the funding and resources for the organization go into service provision and education/prevention activities, leaving little time for strategic planning. Essentially, organizational knowledge exists at an individual level, which causes concern in terms of sustainability, continuity, evaluation, raising funding, writing research proposals, and staff training. AS operations are largely based on tacit knowledge, or knowledge that resides within individuals, and little of it is explicit knowledge, or knowledge that can be examined by and shared with others. This problem yields the following research question: How does AIDS Saskatoon convert their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge? This research study examines AS tacit knowledge and represents it in an explicit format with the combination of thematic analysis and an organizational model. <p>A Participatory Action Research (PAR) method is employed to gather and analyze qualitative data. The thematic analysis reveals the mental models and beliefs that are taken for granted at AS and therefore no longer articulated among the participants but simply a part of their daily practice. A metaphorical model of AS, using Nonakas theory of knowledge creation as a theoretical basis, is presented to convey some of the tacit knowledge that cannot be captured in words. <p>AS has had some challenges in their explicit knowledge documentation. This research takes one piece of their tacit knowledge and represents it explicitly through themes and image: themes articulated tacit knowledge at AS in an explicit format, and the organizational model framed the knowledge by using metaphor. <p>An important implication of this research for the larger body of knowledge management literature is that the overarching concepts in Nonakas theory of knowledge creation were applicable for a community-based organization, where most Knowledge Management literature has focused on for-profit contexts.

This dissertation develops and explores how a particular variety of virtue epistemology (VE) applies to the theory and practice of education. To this end, several key issues are addressed: knowledge and epistemology, knowledge in education, virtue and culture, and the application of a particular variety of VE to education. Furthermore, this dissertation employs a philosophical methodology based in theoretical work from two disciplines—philosophy and education. In Chapter I, I explicate the purpose of this dissertation and provide a rationale for pursuing this project. I also clarify some key terminology, discuss some delimiting factors, and offer chapter previews. In Chapter II, I discuss how Edmond Gettier challenged the standard definition of knowledge as justified true belief. This resulted in the development of virtue-based epistemologies. Having distinguished between several forms of VE, I conclude this chapter by advancing regulative virtue epistemology (RVE). In Chapter III, I provide a conceptual and historical overview of the concept of knowledge in the specific context of educational theory. This discussion provides important context for the application of RVE to educational matters. In Chapter IV, I consider how the concept of virtue is understood in several diverse cultural contexts. Here I ameliorate a potential worry—that virtue is a distinctly Western concept. Finally, in Chapter V, I apply RVE to the theory and practice of education. It is shown that RVE has important implications for the epistemic aims of education—that is, the ultimate knowledge-related purposes of education. Specifically, I find that understanding offers a more holistic account of educational theorizing, and places greater responsibility on teachers and students in their educational activities. I also conclude that RVE widens the aims of education to include other epistemic goods. I then demonstrate that communication—an important feature of education—is also regulated by intellectual virtue. Finally, I present two proposals for teaching from an RVE perspective, and find that each has particular strengths and weaknesses. I conclude with some areas for future research.

AIDS Saskatoon (AS), a non-profit organization, has limited funding. Most of the funding and resources for the organization go into service provision and education/prevention activities, leaving little time for strategic planning. Essentially, organizational knowledge exists at an individual level, which causes concern in terms of sustainability, continuity, evaluation, raising funding, writing research proposals, and staff training. AS operations are largely based on tacit knowledge, or knowledge that resides within individuals, and little of it is explicit knowledge, or knowledge that can be examined by and shared with others. This problem yields the following research question: How does AIDS Saskatoon convert their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge? This research study examines AS tacit knowledge and represents it in an explicit format with the combination of thematic analysis and an organizational model. <p>A Participatory Action Research (PAR) method is employed to gather and analyze qualitative data. The thematic analysis reveals the mental models and beliefs that are taken for granted at AS and therefore no longer articulated among the participants but simply a part of their daily practice. A metaphorical model of AS, using Nonakas theory of knowledge creation as a theoretical basis, is presented to convey some of the tacit knowledge that cannot be captured in words. <p>AS has had some challenges in their explicit knowledge documentation. This research takes one piece of their tacit knowledge and represents it explicitly through themes and image: themes articulated tacit knowledge at AS in an explicit format, and the organizational model framed the knowledge by using metaphor. <p>An important implication of this research for the larger body of knowledge management literature is that the overarching concepts in Nonakas theory of knowledge creation were applicable for a community-based organization, where most Knowledge Management literature has focused on for-profit contexts.

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Many researchers in the social science, includes the political science, insist that the main stream of theory of social science depends on structural foundation. But we tried to provided new approach for social science through Elster¡¦s view, on the hand, we clarified what reductionism is, on the other hand, we believed the social science can connect with the natural science by the reductive approach. In order to prove that the natural science¡¦s foundation is the reductive mechanism, we researched the philosophy of natural science and stressed the importance of the ontology and the epistemology. We confirmed the foundation of natural science is micro-mechanism. Elster re-interpret Rational Choice and Marxism through cognition psychology and game theory. We can increase the research range of human behaviors, moral and culture through the intensive explanation.

Analogy arguments from religious experience attempt to establish a direct analogy between sense perception and certain kinds of religious experience construed in terms of a perceptual model. C. B. Martin challenges traditional analogy arguments from religious experience by contending that there is a disanalogy between both kinds of experience due to the fact that there is a society of testing and checkup procedures available to sense perception that is not available to religious experience. William P. Alston presents his own analogy argument from religious experience in Perceiving God. Alston establishes an analogy between sense perception and religious experience by arguing that certain kinds of religious experience can be construed in terms of a perceptual model. In doing so, Alston maintains that sense perception and certain kinds of religious experience that count as perception?mystical perception?produce justified beliefs in very similar ways. Thus, Alston defuses Martin's objection by arguing that both kinds of perception have testing and checkup procedures available to them, procedures which are necessary to defeat the prima facie justification of perceptual beliefs. However, I argue that because there are apparently inconsistent core beliefs in the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of Christian mystical perception, the analogy between sense perception and mystical perception is threatened. In order for Alston's analogy argument to be successful, he must address this problem.

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